the world bank symposium happened today. all the work paid off. it was pretty insightful. the thing abt these usp organised things is you meet a lot of pretty smart ppl, and you can learn quite a bit cos everyone has a diff way of looking at things.
the symposium was mostly abt aid and it's (in)effectiveness. made me think quite a bit. some countries don't need aid per se. they need land, they need food. but money cannot necessarily buy them land and food if there is a general shortage of land and food. some governments provide farmers free electricity. but the poor farmers don't need electricity cos they don't own machines and stuff. electricity will not benefit them directly. the larger farms, however, benefit from this free electricity, and can afford to sell their farmed good at a lower price cos of lower costs, ousting the already poor farmers from the market. this is an example of a good intentioned help gone awry. but that's not always the case.
aid is a very touchy issue in the sense the neutral bodies providing the aid, world bank and IMF, have to remain neutral. and sometimes, indirectly, truly deserving countries may not receive their aid. see..IMF works this way. countries are ranked according to their economical health. the wealthier the country, the more it contributes to the wealth pool of IMF (think membership fees..makes sense right?). this is called the quota. countries can then borrow according to their quota. ie, a country that contributes more is entitled to borrow more, cos then, IMF knows you can pay them back, somehow. ironically, countries that can't afford to contribute much don't get to borrow much. that's not the only problem. a more worrying, underlying problem arises cos IMF works with a voting system. the more you contribute, the more weight your opinions hold cos the more votes you have. the member countries gather to assess requests for loans. that is, countries vote to decide if another country shld receive aid or not. hmm..enter POLITICS. if i were a rich and powerful country, contributing a lot to the IMF, and holding many many votes, and we were deciding whether to lend money to this country that shows great potential for development. a potentially large threat, in other words. would i vote for providing the means in which to achieve this development, and jeopardise the state of my own country? don't think altruistically. think national interests. logically..no..i'd vote to not lend them money.
the other problem with aid is who shld take ownership of the money. mostly, it's the government, so sometimes, the money doesn't go all the way down the hierarchy to the ppl who really really need the money. corruption is strife. china adopted this policy where the people took ownership of the money. they go to the govt directly and request for a portion of the aid money, and they have to return the money to the govt at the end of the day, regardless of whether they used the money wisely. in my opinion, this system has its own flaws. what if the person is unable to return the money borrowed? being china..i'd throw the man in jail. but so? the money is still gone..and i'd have to find some way or other to find some money to return IMF. spreading the accountability of the aid money and responsibility for it isn't very much different then, right?
hmm..pretty heavy stuff here..but imagine, i listened to this all aft 4hrs of slp (got out of bed brgrudgingly at 6am), pretty early in the day. i'm surprised i still have this bits of information in my head. i think there's more..but when i remember, i'll blog. feel free to tag and tell me my logic is warped (which i doubt though..sounds sound to me..haha). (:
